Book News
Michael Oher tells his tale.
By now everyone in America knows the story of Michael Oher, a homeless black kid who became a pro football player with the Baltimore Ravens — thanks in large part to a well-to-do white family that took him in. His story was a focus of Michael Lewis’ book “The Blind Side” and was made into a popular movie starring Sandra Bullock. It was a heart-warming tale of redemption, but Oher did not like the implication that he was dumb, so he kept his distance from all the hype.
Now, Oher will offer his own version in “I Beat the Odds: My Amazing Journey from Foster Care to the NFL and Beyond,” a memoir to be published next February by Gotham Books. It will be written with Don Yaeger, who has had a hand in books about UCLA coaching legend John Wooden, New York Mets pitcher Tug McGraw and Chicago Bears running back Walter Payton.
Gotham Books publisher William Shinker said, “From reading the book ‘The Blind Side’ and seeing the award-winning movie of the same name, millions of people think they know Michael Oher’s story, but they really don’t. . . . This will be the first time he will be able to tell his story in his own words with details that only he knows.”
First Lines
The Blood-Dimmed Tide, by Will Beall (a story in the collection “Hook, Line & Sinister,” edited by T. Jefferson Parker
Ballard played dead while four stone-eyed gangsters from MS-13 dropped him on the deck of the trawler. They were compact men with sinewy limbs. Every visible inch of skin scrimshawed by gothic MS tattoos, even their faces. Ballard made them for gangbangers called up to the majors, culled from the street ranks of Mara Salvatrucha to play for the cartel.
They were a few miles off the Santa Monica Pier now. Ballard could see the neon spokes of the Ferris wheel and he heard the sea lions bellowing from their buoy as two gangsters lifted chum sacks out of plastic paint buckets. They punctured them with knives, spattering the deck with reeking cow’s blood, and dangled the sacks from the stern cleats of the trawler. Then one of them tossed the dead coyote over the side. Ballard doubted sharks got much coyote.
The soldados now yanked Ballard up off the deck and he decided he would fight them if they tried to throw him into the drink now, but they dropped him down the stairs instead. . . . His wrists, bound with his own handcuffs, were already blue and swollen. Ballard’s head throbbed, his eyes adjusting to the dark. The only light in the room came from a desk lamp on the galley table. Next to the lamp, Ballard saw a glass of ice, a pair of bolt cutters, and a fifty-milliliter vial of Lidocaine. So he knew he was in for a long night.
Paperback BestSellers
1. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson
2. The Last Song, by Nicholas Sparks
3. The Girl Who Played With Fire, by Stieg Larsson
4. Dead and Gone, by Charlaine Harris
5. Just Take My Heart, by Mary Higgins Clark
6. Fatally Flaky, by Diane Mott Davidson
7. Gone Tomorrow, by Lee Child
8. Dear John, by Nicholas Sparks
9. Hero at Large, by Janet Evanovich
10. Blood Game, by Iris Johansen
Publishers Weekly
